Hello, I took AQA computing and I am sitting an exam this year in June.

Yesterday my entire class received our mock papers back for computing. In the programming side of the course the whole class passed and hit their minimum grade, the majority of people with Cs and a few As and Bs.

Then, here comes the surprising part (well not too surprising considering what I am going to tell you next) we got back our mock paper for the theory and the whole class aside from 3 people got Us. That is 3 out of 20 people that would fail had that been a real exam.

I think this goes to show how bad my theory teacher is in comparison to my programming teacher. We had a lesson yesterday, a sort of one off thing with the programming teacher who taught us theory and it made De Morgan's laws so much clearer. Now I have a two week Easter break and I am really stuck with what to do, my theory teacher is telling us we all need to read around the subject and learn network typologies as well as electrostatic discharge and extranet, none of which are on the course. So what do you advise me to do? I got a B in programming and a U in theory and I think at best I would be able to get a C in theory and that is if I really try hard over Easter.

A-Levels involve a lot of independent study, use the syllabus and make sure you know everything on it. Look at ALL the past papers. Use the textbook and wikibooks and you'll be fine. It is tempting to blame teachers, and you might not get on well with certain teaching styles, but at the end of the day you care about your grades and you need to take control of your learning. Hope that helps.

A-Levels involve a lot of independent study, use the syllabus and make sure you know everything on it. Look at ALL the past papers. Use the textbook and wikibooks and you'll be fine. It is tempting to blame teachers, and you might not get on well with certain teaching styles, but at the end of the day you care about your grades and you need to take control of your learning. Hope that helps.

Yes,

but I think in this case it is quite right to blame the teacher. You are not supposed to have to teach yourself the core material for the A-level. The teacher is supposed to do that. Reading around the subject is to broaden your knowledge based on what you have already been taught. If you have been taught next to nothing, then you have problems even if you do a lot of extra reading.